


light seeps through everything

by krautrock



Category: Magic: The Gathering
Genre: Dragon & Human Interactions, M/M, Mayfly-December Romance, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, i'm the lord of the rarepairs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2016-08-07
Packaged: 2018-08-07 05:35:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7702645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krautrock/pseuds/krautrock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>''Dragons find their soulmates through the patterns in their scales. Humans do it through a mark on their body. I am both. I had a mark on my chest, and these grew into it. You have seen these runes, have you not?" Just a tiny thing set in a canon-based soulmate AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	light seeps through everything

''I found my soulmate on the trunk of a white tree.'' The woman focused her gaze on the surface of her tea, gently shaping the amber light it reflected. It assembled neatly into a name, an etching, with the appearance of a relic, one that was engraved somewhere on her skin.  
  
''She had been dead long before I found her. As another Narset, we would have been together. In your new Tarkir, I am bound to a spirit.'' Sarkhan Vol frowned. In the few weeks he had spent in his haven of dragons, the damage their rule had done to the people of Tarkir was already incalculable. And now he knew that his only friend was not only doomed in his original timeline, but forever bound to live without her soulmate's physical self in the one he'd created with her help. ''Truly, I do not resent you. Ugin has returned, to the rejoicing of uncountable planes, and whatever the Other Narset saw in this world, I am content to live in it." Her voice reflected wisdom beyond her years, and Sarkhan became acutely aware of how he embodied the absolute opposite. Worst of all, he knew that she meant what she said, and that nothing could change the fact that he did not have the fortitude to ignore the aching in his chest the way she could. Anafenza, huh? He remembered hearing of her, the khan of the Abzan house.  
  
''What did you feel when you sensed her?'' His hands trembled as he recalled the first time he saw Ugin.  
  
''A fire without a burn.'' She said plainly, and sipped her tea. ''But I reckon you came here with a story of your own." His grip on his own teacup tightened, bloodless fingertips relieving his tension. His other hand brushed the mantle that covered his shoulders aside, tracing the lines in the faint dragonscales.  
  
''Dragons'' He paused to make sure she was following attentively, intent on only saying what he was about to say once ''Dragons find their soulmates through the patterns in their scales. Humans do it through a mark on their body. I am both. I had a mark on my chest, and these grew into it. You have seen these runes, have you not?’’Narset nodded. Ugin's markings were, to her, like the paving on a road. They existed throughout Tarkir, reminding it of its protector and his watchful, almost uninterrupted gaze.  
  
''Then he knows as well.'' Sarkhan's bitter expression all but told her that Ugin had not mentioned it at all. She could not, and would not, pretend to understand what had happened over a thousand years ago, or what the spirit dragon's true motives were.   
  
The light in Sarkhan's tea moved. It told him _you have an opportunity i do not_. He finished his tea in silence, and prepared to exit the cavern.  
  
''Thank you, Narset.''

 

* * *

 

  
Sarkhan looked in awe and disgust at the hellkites his master had procured for him. The thrill of commanding such power coursed through his draconic blood, and, with shame, he admitted to himself that it mattered more to his pride than preserving the dinity of his beastly devotions.  
  
''Now the question is, can you truly control them?''  
  
Karrthus stirred in confusion, a vacant look in his once fierce eyes. Each of the five assembled dragons was adorned with a halo of purple energy, Bolas' sway over them.  
The ancient planeswalker was gone before Sarkhan could protest, slamming the enormous doors behind him with the wave of a clawed hand. One by one, the great jundian dragons turned towards their new master.

 

* * *

 

  
The first thing he noticed upon leaving his tent was that Tarkir's nightly sky looked terribly common without the dragon storms caused by Ugin's presence. The wind in the valley blew gently across Sarkhan's face, assuring him that he was still in his home plane, and under the protection of his benefactor's scions. Cold sweat gathered at his brow, and his pulse raced. The damned nightmares again, sometimes memories of his time under Bolas, often imagined scenes of an even worse nature, that had plagued him ever since his time in the dragon's service came to an end.  
  
Soon Ugin would learn of everything that took place during his absence, and, therefore, of Sarkhan's actions in Alara. He imagined the great spirit dragon surrounding him with crystaline illusions, his actions in Naya and what he earned from them, the betrayal of his own kind -kinds- for the benefit of Ugin's enemy. Maybe he would extract information from the planeswalkers in Zendikar and know of his slow, lonely madness at the Eye, mirroring it back to him with enough reality to unravel his mind anew. When they met, the short smile he earned from the dragon was hardly compensation for the distrust he’d shown. Should soulmates react to each other so nonchalantly? Even as the dragon enlightened him, he could feel the need to reach out, to absorb more of his energy, his very presence, a feeling purer than the one he’d experienced upon meeting Bolas, but unavoidably stronger. It became too much, he had needed to find the only friend who could soothe his troubled mind anew – only to discover she’d been affected by his actions in a directly proportional way.  
  
A thousand years back, when he saw Ugin's eyes close... did he feel it then? Their inevitable bond. Sarkhan's entire life had been inexorably, fatefully linked to the moment when he would meet his soulmate, but Ugin's seemed too important to ever be truly dependant on his. Could a being such as him even have those feelings anymore?  
Throwing his mantle aside, Sarkhan forced the muscles in his legs back to work, rising to scan the horizon. He found a sentry to the east, and marched towards it.  
Stars shone through the specter's wings as it lay where it was ordered, a hieratic replica of Ugin's kind. After their first meeting they had been docile towards him, and Ugin's scions were the closest to the spirit dragon Sarkhan would find until his return. He sat in front of it.  
  
''Ugin'' he addressed the ghostly wyvern directly, obtaining its full attention. Although perfectly capable of independent action, each scion was but an automaton. ''I know that saving you was not enough to make up for all my life and my past actions. I am willing to renounce this if you so desire. But please," His voice cracked. ''I need to know if you felt it as well." The scion's eyes seemed, for a moment, to reflect intelligence. Sarkhan froze, but resumed his monologue. ''When I first saw you, I felt whole.'' Not a dragon or a man, but himself. He reached for the sentry's pale face. ''Touching you...'' his words trailed into a soft gasp. The spirit dragon's scales under his tired, half-dead hands, all those years ago... There was a knot in his throat. Laid to waste, the dragon had done nothing as he traced the runes in his cowl, matching them to his mark in an effort to make sure it was not a mistake. That the beating heart of Tarkir’s dragons was the one he had been born for.  
  
He laid down next to the sentry, silently contemplating a course of action for Ugin’s return, as the cosmos, free from the cover of the dragon tempest, shared its many lights with the valley and lulled Sarkhan back to sleep.

 

* * *

 

  
Hollow bones filled with spores, death-fresh and glistening. A structurally impaired eyeball cracked through with shrapnel. What remained of Kozilek’s head accused the dragon silently.  
  
The titan’s untimely demise weighed heavily on his thoughts, and looking away would only reveal a deeper burden. Hedrons, hedrons everywhere. Cracked hedrons, half-buried hedrons, tipped cascades of hedrons lining the horizon, his dwelling at the Eye; Zendikar was hedrons, and each was inscribed with his own runes. The dragonspeaker’s runes.  
It was not supposed to happen, Ugin had no soulmate, the augurs had predicted as much. Not as long as he lived.  
So his spirit had sought his soulmate out? Lived inside his head, led him to the reality he now knew. Surely the dragon mage understood, when he traced his cowl a thousand years before, when their faces touched and the ancestral dragon closed his eyes. He remembered dying a deep slumber, expecting never to see his soulmate again. That he would appear again upon his awakening was unexpected at best.  
  
Kozilek’s eye still stared.  
  
_Even you have died, who once leveled planes. He will be gone before I can begin to show him what it means to be a dragon’s soulmate._


End file.
